Monday, September 15, 2008

Touch sensor that sees the sense of touch

Researchers Vivek Maheshwaria and Ravi F. Saraf at Univ. of Nebrask presented an interesting touch (tactile) sensor structure [1]. It is well known that most touch sensors convert physical touch to changes in electricity. For example, capacitive touch sensors measure capacitance changes produced by human touch. However, the presented sensor glows in response to applied pressure. Therefore, it is possible to get very high resolutioin pressure measurement comparable to human finger with the combination of CCD image sensor,

In macrosopic level, Japanese researchers introduced a similar concept (GelForce) to detect pressure [3].

Although the resolution is quite high for human computer interface, it is very useful to build surgical robots [2].

ABOUT KITRONYX

Kitronyx is an engineering company that provides development tools and engineering design services to individuals, companies, universities and government agencies based on expertise in force, pressure, and multi-touch technologies. Our focus is on providing the ‘closest to complete’ technology to enable customers to rapidly turn ideas into real products.

Rapid Prototyping

Customers who wants to embed or prototype pressure distribution sensing, force measurement, multi-touch position sensing and gesture recognition have difficulties to find a reliable turn-key solution provider. Our rapid prototyping techniques, combining hardware, firmware and software base modules along with custom development, can quickly prove a concept and act as a platform for further development. Learn More.